{"id":1449,"date":"2024-07-30T19:29:48","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T19:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1449"},"modified":"2024-10-14T11:26:05","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T15:26:05","slug":"basic-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/07\/30\/basic-training\/","title":{"rendered":"Basic Training"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Basic Training <\/strong>(1985)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Movie Store\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (lots of nudity including full frontal, sexual content, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Andrew Sugarman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bernie Kahn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Michael Cruz\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Stephen W. Gray\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 1985 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ann Dusenberry, Rhonda Shear, Angela Aames, Will Nye, Walter Gotell, Marty Brill, William A. Forester, Christopher Pennock, Mark Withers, Gerard Prendergast, Marty Cohen, Orly Oh, Linda Hoy, Kenny Ellis, Gerald Berns.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0As I often do when I watch older films, I wondered what today\u2019s teens would make of Basic Training<\/strong>, a trifling adult comedy with characters controlled by their libidos. I watched dozens of similar movies on cable and video during my own teen years in the 80s. I enjoyed them, but I\u2019m not sure they\u2019d go over with modern audiences. I\u2019m not sure they\u2019d see the humor in the depiction of a workplace where horndog bosses routinely proposition and grope their female employees. You could joke about a situation like that way back when, but not anymore. Now it\u2019s one of those things you don\u2019t joke about. Hell, just talking about a movie like Basic Training<\/strong> at work might get you a sit-down with an HR rep.<\/p>\n

\u00a0When I rented Basic Training<\/strong> way back in summer 1986, I thought it would be a silly Police Academy knock-off. That\u2019s what the poster implied. Well, it\u2019s not that. It\u2019s more of a dirty-minded sex comedy in the vein of Weekend Pass and The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington. That\u2019s not what I signed on for. I felt gypped. I didn\u2019t find it especially funny either. I got so bored, I turned it off after about 35 minutes (give or take) and put in the other movie I rented that day, Disney\u2019s The Journey of Natty Gann. How\u2019s that for a double feature?<\/p>\n

\u00a0I never even considered giving Basic Training<\/strong> a second chance until now. What changed? Nothing, absolutely nothing, that\u2019s what. I was looking to review a really bad movie, something I like to do now and again. I figured Basic Training<\/strong> would do the trick. That\u2019s where things get weird. It\u2019s still a bad movie, but this time I didn\u2019t shut it off. Something- okay, a few things- about it compelled me to keep watching. In the end, I didn\u2019t regret it. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d say I liked it, but I didn\u2019t hate it either.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Although I had already seen a lot of movies by \u201986 (I was 18), I was still something of a novice. I wasn\u2019t able to appreciate the finer points of crappy exploitation movies like Basic Training<\/strong>, one of which is casting. Like a lot of movies of its ilk, it features an interesting cast of actors with dubious talent. Take the three leading ladies. No, make that the three HOT leading ladies- Ann Dusenberry (Jaws 2), Rhonda Shear (the future host of USA Up All Night) and the late Angela Aames (Bachelor Party). I\u2019m not sure you can call what they do in Basic Training<\/strong> acting, but they look damn sexy doing it. That counts for a lot with teen boys of all ages.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot, such as it is, centers on Melinda (Dusenberry), a buttoned-down type from a small Midwest town who moves to Washington D.C. in hopes of working for the government. She moves in with her best friend from back home, Debbie (Shear), who helps her get a job as a secretary at the Pentagon. The problem is her boss Lt. Cranston (Nye, Remote Control) expects her to do more than take dictation. She\u2019s fired after rejecting his advances on multiple occasions. Rather than take it lying down, Melinda decides to get even, not just with Cranston but ALL the sex-crazy men in charge. She\u2019s helped by Debbie and their buxom roommate Cheryl (Aames). Together, they make a stand for feminism and equality in the working by using their greatest….. uh, shall we say assets?<\/p>\n

\u00a0By way of a subplot, there\u2019s some business about valuable intelligence on the Soviets gone missing, presumed erased from the data banks by a spy. It was actually caused by a careless cleaning lady, but that never occurs to the idiots in charge. It\u2019s 1985, of course it was the Russians! Melinda takes it on herself to gather the missing info by seducing the horny Russian ambassador played by Walter Gotell, best known as KGB ally General Gogol in several James Bond movies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s romance too. When she\u2019s all but given up on the idea of finding a good man, Melinda finds romance with the nice guy (Prendergast, The Hollywood Knights) she met on the plane coming to D.C. The fact that he tells her a little about himself before she turns him down for a date tells you that they\u2019ll run into each other again eventually. And they do, literally, in a parking lot. A romantic montage or two later, they\u2019re an item.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is the only feature film to be directed by Andrew Sugarman. He would go on to produce titles like Death Sentence, Shopgirl and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. Any one of them, even the bombastic Ballistic, is a step up from Basic Training<\/strong>. It\u2019s little more than a dirty movie starring three nubile young actresses who don\u2019t need an excuse to shed their clothes. That\u2019s not a criticism; it\u2019s a description. Not that it\u2019s a bad thing because it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It would be easy for me to sit here and tear Basic Training<\/strong> apart. It\u2019s a bad film on many levels, but only if you think of it in terms of mainstream cinema. You have to adjust your thinking if you want to be entertained by it. It\u2019s a movie that\u2019s meant to be watched on video or on late-night cable TV by 15YO boys with sex on the brain 24\/7. You better believe I would have watched it multiple times at that age. I missed the cut by just a few years.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let\u2019s talk a little more about the cast. No performance in Basic Training<\/strong> is award worthy and no cast member is a master thespian. The acting is pretty bad for the most part. Now let me ask you, isn\u2019t that part of the show? Who wants to see a bunch of Olivier and Streep imitators in a T&A exploitation comedy? As long as everybody\u2019s reasonably attractive and the girls have big boobs, who really gives a f***? That being said, I like the main actresses, especially Aames who tragically died of heart disease in \u201988 (she was only 32). You might remember her as the hot mom being photographed by Adrian Zmed in Bachelor Party. She also played Little Bo Peep in the softcore sex comedy Fairy Tales, \u201cBoom-Boom Bangs\u201d in H.O.T.S. and Miss Vanders in Chopping Mall. Now she was H-O-T HOT!<\/p>\n

\u00a0For me, the other cast member of note is Gerard Prendergast, an actor who got around quite a bit in the 70s and 80s. He was surfer guy Tarzan in The Hollywood Knights. He played Bernard in the short-lived 1979 sitcom Makin\u2019 It. He was in a low-budget sci-fi flick called Time Walker. He also appeared in Bachelor Party as the bartender at the male strip joint, the one who introduces the guys to \u201cNick the Dick\u201d. According to IMDb, he hasn\u2019t acted since \u201997. I liked him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Now for the $64,000 question, is Basic Training<\/strong> funny? It kind of is. It\u2019s funny in the same way as cheap T&A comedies like Screwballs and The Beach Girls are. It\u2019s dumb, sleazy and dirty. Its IQ is firmly in the double-digits. The \u201cplot\u201d is merely a device to string together scenes of actresses showing their boobs and other body parts. You know what? I don\u2019t mind, not at all. I\u2019m not one of those stodgy, stuffy, self-important critics who come down on movies like Basic Training<\/strong> because they\u2019re not Citizen Kane. I actually prefer them to many \u201ccritically acclaimed\u201d films. They\u2019re fun and require no brain work on the part of the viewer. What\u2019s wrong with that?\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Basic Training (1985)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Movie Store\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (lots of nudity including full frontal, sexual content, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Andrew Sugarman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bernie Kahn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Michael Cruz\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Stephen W. Gray\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 1985 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ann Dusenberry, Rhonda Shear, Angela Aames, Will Nye, Walter Gotell, Marty Brill, William A. Forester, Christopher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Basic-Training-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1449"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2017,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions\/2017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}